This roof, built "after the fire," is a modern invention, designed for the torture of whoever lives underneath. It is flat, with a beautiful view to be had among the chimney-pots and telephone wires; it is so thin that a pigeon could not waddle across without being heard by us; and as it is covered with gravel, every sound is accompanied by a scrunching warranted to set the strongest nerves in a quiver. We had already been obliged to represent to the Agent that it was not intended for the Housekeeper's afternoon parties or young people's games of tag, that there were other, more suitable places where postmen could take a rest, or our actress recite her lines, or lovers do their courting amid the smuts. Our patience, indeed, had been so tried in one way or another that at the first sound from above, at any hour of the day or night, J. was giving chase to the trespassers, and they were retreating before the eloquence of his attack. It was in a corner of this roof, just above the studio and in among wood-enclosed cisterns, that the Suffragettes elected to send off fire-balloons, which, in some way best known to themselves, were to impress mankind with the necessity of giving them the vote. The first balloon floated above the chimney-tops, a sheet of flame, and was dropping, happily into the Thames, when J., straight from his printing-press, in blouse, sleeves rolled up, arms and hands black with ink, a cap set sideways, was on the roof, and the Secretary of the Militants and a young man in the brown suit and red tie that denote the Socialist, in their hands matches and spirits of wine, were flying downstairs. I was puzzled to account for their meekness unless it was that never before had they seen anybody so inky, never before listened to language so picturesque and American. J., without giving them time to take breath, called in the Landlord's Agent, supported by the Landlord's Solicitor, and they were convinced of the policy of promising not to do it again. And of course they did. A week later the Prime Minister was unveiling a statue, or performing some equally innocent function in the garden below our windows, when the Suffragettes, from the roofs of near woodsheds, demanded him through a megaphone to give Votes to Women. We followed the movement with such small zest that when we were first aware something out of the common was going on in the Quarter, the two heroines were already in the arms of policemen, where of late so much of the Englishwoman's time has been spent, and heads were at every window up and down our street, housekeepers at every door, butchers' and bakers' boys grouped on the sidewalk, one or two tradesmen's carts drawn up in the gutter, battalions of police round the corner. The women no doubt to-day boast of the performance as a bold strike for freedom, and recall with pride the sensation it created.